“That would spoil him, and he would expect it to-morrow night,” said oracular grandmamma.
“I will read, then,” said Thea.
She recommenced her persuasions, and as a result she presently had the old lady going docilely away with the messenger to poor Nance’s bedside, leaving her locked securely into the large, lonely house, its only occupant save the tiny sleeping babe.
Thea quickly came back along the silent hall and shut herself into the nursery.
“I hope nurse will not be long,” she murmured, beginning to walk restlessly up and down the floor. “Of course, I am not exactly afraid, but it seems so very still and lonely, and—I miss Norman so very much. I wonder how far he is on his way by now? It is just seven hours and a half since he went. Baby, baby, I wish you would wake up and talk to me! Of course, you couldn’t say anything but papa and mamma and gee-gee and boo, but even that would be cheering now.”
She leaned over the foot of the crib and pinched one of Alan’s soft, rosy toes, eager for him to wake, and even scream if he chose.
“I certainly am not afraid, but I feel foolishly nervous and blue. I wish nurse would hurry. What can that dying woman want with mother? Ugh! it makes one shiver to think of death in this great, lonely house; but there is nothing to harm one here—nothing.” Yet she grew pale as a mouse nibbled behind the wainscot, and cried out: “Oh, how can Alan sleep so when I pull his toes so hard? Can it be that Mary dosed him with paregoric to make him rest while she was gone? Oh, I almost wish he would wake and scream with the colic! It would be better than this.”
But Alan only kicked when she pinched his toes, and slept on more soundly than ever, confirming her in her theory of the paregoric.
“I’ll discharge her to-morrow,” Thea thought, indignantly, throwing herself into a chair. “Oh, I won’t be so nervous and silly,” she went on, vexedly. “I know there’s nothing to make cold chills run down my back this way. I’ll think about something pleasant—about Norman. I’ll compose some poetry on his absence.”
She flung herself into a chair at a little table where there was a pencil and a pad of writing-paper, and putting her golden head on one side with a pretty, bird-like motion, began to think in rhyme: